Transcendence AU Wiki:Style Guide

The purpose of this guide is to define a standard by which articles on the TAU wiki should be written. It aims to be strict enough that multiple people can work on the wiki simultaneously and still result in a consistent, maximally informative style.

Warning: This is a work-in-progress, and is subject to change. It is very possible that edits made to the wiki before this guide is finalized will need to be redone at a later point because relevant style rules have changed.

General

• Write from the perspective of the fandom, not from the perspective of the universe.
  • e.g. Dipper is most well-known to the fandom as Dipper Pines, not Alcor the Dreambender, even though it is the reverse in-universe
• The wiki is about the Transcendence AU -- do not write about material from the Gravity Falls canon unless it is relevant to TAU.
• Do not use the wiki to host fics. That is what AO3 is for.
• Once posted, your edits belong to the wiki. If they are later modified or removed, it is a reflection on the content, not you.
• If you are unsure whether something is true, fact check it before adding it to the wiki.

Canonicity

• As TAU has a squishy canon, it is necessary to distinguish between “canon-establishing” information, “canon-compatible” information, and “non-canon” information.
  • Works in TAU are considered part of the AU regardless of their canonicity. However, having an agreed upon established canon allows multiple editors to work on the wiki simultaneously.
• A source is “canon-establishing” if it presents the greatest source of truth for the relevant subject. This is often the same as the “premise” of the subject.
  • In general, the mods (and thus the TAU blog) are considered canon-establishing.
  • When it comes to arcs, sub-AU’s, fics, and characters, the person or people who created them are canon-establishing sources.
  • A subject’s “established canon” is made up of the canon-establishing sources for that subject.
• A source is “non-canon” if it clearly contradicts established canon.
  • Sub-AU’s are by nature non-canon to the main TAU canon.
  • e.g. if Mabel becomes a demon instead of Dipper, that is non-canon for TAU (but canon in Equivalence AU)
• A source is “canon-compatible” if it is not canon-establishing or non-canon.
• Canonicity is evaluated in relation to something. When we talk about a source’s canonicity without context, it is in relation to the main TAU canon. However, sources can also have canonicity in relation to arcs, characters, and sub-AU’s.
  • e.g. “Lucy Ann & the Lunch Bunch” is canon-compatible with Lucy Ann’s existence as a character, and should be mentioned in her article as a work in which she appears. However, it is canon-establishing with regards to Lane Douglas, so it can and should be used as a source when writing the History section of her article.
• Canon-establishing information is important because it gives readers a foundation through which they can understand canon-compatible works.
• Canon-compatible information can and should be documented, because the wiki is intended to document TAU, not just the premise of TAU.
• The distinction between established canon and compatible canon is important when dealing with conflicting information:
  • If a canon-establishing source and a canon-compatible source conflict, prefer the canon-establishing source.
  • If two canon-establishing sources conflict, document both and note the inconsistency.
• Non-canon information should not be documented, except for on pages about sub-AU’s.
• Sources should be cited regardless of canonicity.
• Be careful to discern established canon from suggested canon.
  • e.g. Often on the TAU blog, a mod may respond to an ask saying that something “could” happen. This does not establish canon, as it is merely a suggestion.
• The wiki itself is not canon-establishing, and cannot be used as a source elsewhere on the wiki.

Style

• The style used by the wiki is a bit different from that of a fic. Write as if you are writing an encyclopedia, documenting events that have already taken place and characters that lived long ago.
• Use proper spelling and grammar when editing the wiki. Do not use chat speak, internet lingo, or emoticons besides what appears in the content being documented.
• In general, use American English spellings. However, names that contain non-American spellings should preserve that spelling.
  • e.g. If this fic were referenced, its title should be spelled “A Thousand Colours”, not “A Thousand Colors”
• Articles should be written from a neutral point of view.
  • e.g. When discussing the California Incident, document the causes, the incident itself, and the consequences, instead of criticizing or excusing Dipper’s actions.
• Avoid em dashes and semicolons unless doing so would make the article harder to read. Break up information into shorter sentences.
• Write in the third person. Do not use “I”, “we”, “you”, or imperative commands (which have an implied “you”).
• Write in a mixture of past and present tense.
  • When delivering objective facts (e.g. stating a date of birth, recounting events), use past tense.
  • When analyzing the subject (e.g. explaining a character’s personality, choices, or thematic value), use present tense.
• Apart from where this guide says otherwise, refrain from using bulleted lists. If you have multiple points to make, split them up into paragraphs.

Misc

• Each page should have a self-link at the beginning of the preamble.
  • If you’re using the source editor, [[{{PAGENAME}}]] is rendered as a link to the current page’s name.
  • If you’re using the visual editor, you can just make a link to the current page.
• The self-link should not contain a leading article (“a”, “an”, or “the”). The article can go before the self-link, but not be part of the link itself.
• If a fic is hosted in multiple places, prefer linking to AO3.
• Article titles should be in title case. Section titles should be in sentence case.
• Section titles should not have colons in them
• Do not include the word “the” at the beginning of titles if dropping it would not change the meaning.
• Contextless quotes should not be used in articles to provide flavor.
• When discussing other elements of TAU, link to other pages on the wiki, even if those pages don’t currently exist.
  • e.g. When mentioning Lucy Ann, make her name a link to her article
• Do not link to another page on the wiki more than one time on the same page.
• Section titles should not be links to other articles on the wiki. Instead, put a context link to the other article under the section title.
• Always use the summary box when making edits to describe briefly why the edit is being made.
• Use regular quotes and apostrophes instead of fancy/smart quotes (“” ‘’).
• Separate two links with at least one non-space character so that it is clear that the links are distinct.

Images

• If possible, articles should include an image at the start of the article (usually inside an infobox) illustrating the subject of the article.
• Do not use NSFW art.
• All artwork must be credited on the page where it is used as well as on the image page itself. This includes naming the artist and a link to the original page where the artwork was hosted.
• Do not use artwork if the artist has requested that their art not be re-uploaded on another site.

Context links

Context links, if present, should be at the very top of the page (or the top of the relevant subsection), in the following order:

• Stub - designates that a page is short and needs more information
  • {{Stub}}
• "Main article: ___" is for linking a short page or subsection to a longer page that covers the topic more thoroughly.
  • {{Main|other_page}}
• "See also: ___" is for cross-linking pages that cover related topics.
  • {{Also|other_page}}
• "For ___, see ___" is for linking distinct pages that have similar names or subject matter.
  • {{For|description|other_page}}
• "Not to be confused with ___" is for linking pages with similar names that could otherwise confuse the reader.
  • {{Distinguish|other_page}}
• “___ redirects here. For (other use), see ___” is similar to For, but specifically for the case where an ambiguously titled page redirects to this page
  • {{Redirect|Original page|other use|Target page}}

Infoboxes

• Infoboxes should appear at the top of the article. Within the source, it should appear after all context links, and before all other text.
• Infobox templates should be portable and built with the infobox builder.
• Lists in infoboxes should be bulleted.
• There are different infoboxes for different types of content. Currently, we have:
  • {{CharacterInfobox}} for characters
  • {{GroupInfobox}} for groups like Circle of the Dreamer’s Star and the Dinner Crew

Citations

• Articles should include citations to sources that verify the claims made in them. An article with no sources cited is considered to have bad style.
• This is especially important when discussing established canon and generally accepted canon.
• Often, this will take the form of links to either the TAU blog, or to AO3.
• Do not include fragments in citation URLs. Fragments are identified by a hashtag and some text at the end of a URL. If a citation URL ends in something like #notes or #workskin, remove the hashtag and everything after it before pasting in the URL.
• Citations should follow any punctuation (usually a period), not precede it.
• In the visual editor, citations can be made by clicking in the location you would like to cite, clicking on “Insert” in the toolbar, and then hitting “Reference”. If you want to re-use an existing reference, you can click “Use an existing reference”.
• In the source editor, citations can be made using <ref> tags like this at the end of the statement that needs the citation:
  • <ref>citation</ref>
• In the source editor, you can name references if you need to use them more than once.
  • This is how the first instance should look: <ref name=”some name”>citation</ref>
  • This is how subsequent instances should look: <ref name=”some name”/>
• If an article includes citations, the following tag must be present at the end of the article in a section called “References”:
  • <references/>

Bibliography Guide

This section describes what you should put in between <ref> tags (see the Citations section for more information). If you need to cite something that does not fit into these categories, contact aba_daba_do on discord.

Fanfiction

• username. "Title of Work" (year published, not updated). [website hosting] <hyperlink>
• e.g. aba_daba_do. “What Within Me is Dark Illumine”. (2017). [AO3] <link to fic here>
• e.g. timetravelbootycall. “Sneak Preview”. [Tumblr] <link>
• If a date is unavailable or unknown, leave it out.
• The FicCitation template will render to this formatting. It is used like so:
  • {{FicCitation|username|Title of Work|year published|website hosting|hyperlink}}
• If the fic is hosted on AO3, you can instead use AO3Citation:
  • {{AO3Citation|username|Title of Work|year published|hyperlink}}
• When citing a work from a oneshot collection, cite the specific chapter. Format the title of the work as “[Collection title], chapter [chapter number]: [chapter title]” if the chapter has a title, or just “[Collection title], chapter [chapter number]” otherwise. Link directly to the proper chapter. The year published should still be the year the collection was published, not the year the chapter was published.
• When citing a work not from a oneshot collection, cite the entire work instead of a specific chapter.
• You do not have to specify whether the author of a work is a mod. The FicCitation and AO3Citation templates will do that automatically.

Tumblr

• Tumblr posts, such as those on the Transcendence AU blog, should use the following citation format:
• username/blogname. "Title of Post/ First words of question". [Tumblr] <hyperlink>
• e.g. transcendence-au. “Alright friendos…”. [Tumblr] <link>
• If you chose to cite an image or comic which has no title or description, please call it “Image”.
• The TumblrCitation template will render to this formatting. It is used like so:
  • {{TumblrCitation|username|Title of post|hyperlink}}
• If the blog in question is the TAU blog, you can instead use TAUBlogCitation:
  • {{TAUBlogCitation|Title of post|hyperlink}}

Twitter

• Tweets should be cited using the following format:
• username. “Full text of tweet”, Date Month Year. [Twitter] <hyperlink>
• e.g. _1anBeale. "@definitelymizar bring ElderGod MiddleBeast & TheEnd stat. Only grandchildren can save me now.", 13 Jan 2016. [Twitter] <https://twitter.com/_1anBeale/status/687492984884060161>
• Use the TweetCitation template to generate this formatting. It is used like so:
  • {{TweetCitation|username|Full text of tweet|Date Month Year|hyperlink}}

Gravity Falls

• When using the Gravity Falls canon as a source, use this citation:
  • Hirsch, Alex, (creator, prod, dir, writer). Gravity Falls. (2012) Disney Channel. Burbank, California. Television.
  • {{GFCanonCitation}} will be rendered as this.
• To cite a specific episode, use this instead:
  • Hirsch, Alex, (creator, prod, dir, writer). "Episode Title." Gravity Falls. (2012) Disney Channel. Call Number, Burbank, California. Date aired. Television.
  • e.g. Hirsch, Alex, (creator, prod, dir, writer). "Sock Opera." Gravity Falls. (2012) Disney XD. 618G-204, Burbank, California. 7 September 2014. Television.
  • {{GFEpisodeCitation|Episode Title|Production code|Date aired}}
  • A list of episode production codes can be found on the Gravity Falls wiki.

Categories

• Category names should be the shortest unambiguous descriptor for what they contain.
• Category names should be plural.
• The text content of a category page should be a definition of what pages they contain.
• All pages should be in one or more categories.

Articles

• Fics do not get individual articles, unless they are the entirety of an arc or a sub-AU.
  • e.g. Loophole AU gets its own page even though it is (at the time of writing this guide) only one fic
• All articles should contain a preamble. This is the text that appears before the first section title, and thus before the table of contents. It should give a brief summary of what the article’s subject is.
  • In the source, it should be after the infobox (if there is one) and before the first section title.
• Depending on the type of article, there may be other sections between the preamble and the “Appearances” section.
• Most articles should include a section entitled “Appearances”.
  • This should contain a bulleted list of canon-establishing and canon-compatible works and arcs relating to the article’s subject.
  • Each work/arc should be formatted as a link to the work/arc, a space, an em-dash (—), a space, and a short description of how the subject relates to the work/arc.
  • The work/arc title should be bolded for canon-establishing works/arcs.
  • Canon-establishing works/arcs should appear before canon-compatible works/arcs.
• Articles may have a section entitled “See also”. This should be a bulleted list of links to other articles on the wiki.
• If an article includes citations, there must be a section (almost always the last section in the article) entitled “References”. See the citations section for more information.

Characters

• Only notable characters should have articles created for them.
• Notability is pretty loose. If a character plays a non-trivial role in a work, they can probably be considered notable enough to have a page written about them.
• Characters from the Gravity Falls canon are not automatically notable.
• Characters do not need to be from fics to be notable. Characters that only appear in art/comics can have articles.

Titles

• In general, name character articles such that they unambiguously refer to the character, in a way that would make sense when talking about someone one doesn’t know personally and who is not present. Often (but not always), this is the name one would use when tagging that character on AO3.
• Use the most well-known name for the character from the perspective of the fandom, not the universe.
  • e.g. “Dipper Pines”, not “Alcor the Dreambender”
• If a demon has a common name in addition to their demon title, only include the common name if it is well known.
  • e.g. “Organ Duck” instead of “Brian” or “Brian the Organ Duck”
• If the most well-known name includes a non-demon title, such as “President”, do not include it.
  • e.g. “Gunda Chancellor” instead of “President Chancellor” or “Senator Chancellor”
• Prefer a character’s real name over a pseudonym/nickname unless the real name is unknown or never used.
  • e.g. “Stanley Pines” instead of “Stan Pines”, because it is a name he has gone by both in canon and in fic, and the latter name could refer to his twin
  • e.g. “Dipper Pines” instead of “Mason Pines”, because the latter is never used
  • e.g. “Lucy Ann” instead of “Sagar”, because the latter is so obscure that I had to look it up
  • e.g. “Hank Pines” instead of “Henry Pines”, because the latter conflicts with his father’s name, and the character is almost never referred to as Henry anyway
• If a character has both a first and last name, use both, even if one of them is not well-known.
  • e.g. “Tobias Pines” instead of “Toby”
• Only include middle names or secret names if they are part of the well-known name.
  • e.g. “Acacia Castañeda” instead of “Acacia Ruth Polaris Castañeda”
• If a character’s name is properly expressed in non-Latin characters, use a romanized version of the name as the article title and clarify within the article.
• If a character’s name is usually written with the family name before the given name, use that order when naming their article.
• If a character’s name changes, use the most up-to-date name for them from the work(s) that are considered canon-establishing for that character.
  • e.g. “Henry Pines” instead of “Henry Corduroy”
• Other names that unambiguously refer to a character should redirect to that character’s page.
  • e.g. “Dipper”, “Mason Pines”, “Alcor”, “The Dreambender”, and “Alcor the Dreambender” should redirect to “Dipper Pines”
• Character articles should make note of all names used for the character.

Content

• Character articles will generally contain a number of sections after the preamble.
• In general, they should appear in this order: (note that not all sections are required for every character)
  • Physical description
  • Personality
  • Powers
  • History
  • Relationships
  • Trivia
• Established canon and compatible canon should both be documented. The focus should be mostly on canon-establishing information, as these sections are intended to document the character’s premise.
  • e.g. A significant amount of work in the fandom considers Mabel Pines to have married an OC named Henry Pines. This is not a requirement of the AU, but is generally accepted canon, and is important to document when discussing Mabel’s history.

Reincarnations

• A lot of the characters in TAU are reincarnations of another character, and this relationship should be documented.
• Reincarnations of a character should belong to a category entitled “[NAME] reincarnations”. The fact that the character is a reincarnation should also be mentioned in the article’s preamble.
  • The location of the reincarnation in the timeline (with respect to other reincarnations) should not be mentioned, because with very few exceptions, there is no canonical global timeline in TAU.
  • An exception to this is if there are multiple reincarnations of the same character in an arc. Because arcs have their own subset of canon, it is possible to establish where reincarnations are relative to each other.
• The article about the original character being reincarnated should not contain a list of the known reincarnations. Instead, the “See also” section of their article should contain a link to the category.
• Mabel Pines is a special case. Her reincarnations should be referred to as Mizars, instead of Mabel reincarnations.

Arcs and sub-AU’s

• Arcs and sub-AU’s should be documented similarly, as they are both collections of works based on an agreed upon premise. The main difference between them is that arcs are canon-compatible with TAU and sub-AU’s are non-canon to TAU.
• The description of an arc or a sub-AU should include important information about that arc or sub-AU, and not just be a play-by-play of plot events.
• Information about a sub-AU is by nature non-canon for TAU. It should only be included on that sub-AU’s article, and not be used in the articles of any characters that are present in that sub-AU.
• Articles about arcs and sub-AU’s should link to their canon-establishing works.

Titles

• Page titles for Arcs should end with the word “Arc”.
• Page titles for sub-AU’s should end with the word “AU”.
• If the canon-establishing source of the arc/sub-AU is a single fic, use the name of that fic.
  • e.g. “Friends With Tax Benefits AU”
• If the canon-establishing creator(s) of the arc/sub-AU have organized their work into a series on AO3, use the name of that series.
  • e.g. “Bentley Farkas and Friends Arc”, with a redirect from “Bentley Arc”
• If the best canon-establishing source of the arc/sub-AU is a tumblr tag, use the name of that tag.
  • e.g. “Matthews and Card Arc”

Advice

• When writing about Stanley Pines and Stanford Pines, be aware of the Stan Twins Theory. Sources from before July 13th, 2015, whether they be fics or blog posts, will refer to Stanley Pines as Stanford Pines and vice versa.